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The Millennium Declaration acknowledges gender equality and empowering of women as specific targets and also as fundamental requirements to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. While these issues are cross-cutting in all Goals, Goal 3 encompasses three official indicators that aim at reflecting the degree of gender equality in education, employment, and political participation.

In analyzing Goal 3, specialized Agencies and particularly ECLAC have considered that gender equality is rooted in the concept of autonomy for women in private and public life as a fundamental goal for the secure exercise of their human rights. To address the complex interaction of the factors entrenching gender inequalities, an approach has been adopted in which three pillars of gender and citizen equality are distinguished. They are: the ability of women to generate their own income and control assets and resources (economic autonomy), control over their bodies (physical autonomy) and full participation in decisions that affect their lives and their community, i.e., decision-making autonomy. Consequently, monitoring and accountability exercises should incorporate a much broader set of targets and address the status of women from a perspective that goes beyond Goal 3.

In this line, ECLAC has advance in the identification of critical areas that are not captured in the official indicators and that led to the development of a series of so-called "complementary" and "additional" indicators that allow a deeper look into the status of women in the region and seek to show how gender inequality affects poverty, its incidence by gender and unequal access to monetary and productive resources. This development is based on the need to measure and quantify gender disparities in different spheres and is in line with fulfilling the Platform for Action of the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995),2 especially concerning the production of data and indicators.

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3.A. Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no later then 2015
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UNIFEM, 2010
Gender Justice: Key to Achieving the Millennium Development Goals Gender Justice: Key to Achieving the Millennium Development Goals
ECLAC, 2010
Agendas legislativas y parlamentarias para el desarrollo de los derechos de las mujeres en América Latina y el Caribe Agendas legislativas y parlamentarias para el desarrollo de los derechos de las mujeres en América Latina y el Caribe
ECLAC, 2010
Enfoque de género en las instituciones laborales y las políticas del mercado de trabajo en América Latina Enfoque de género en las instituciones laborales y las políticas del mercado de trabajo en América Latina
ECLAC, 2010
Estudio de la información sobre la violencia contra la mujer en América Latina y el Caribe Estudio de la información sobre la violencia contra la mujer en América Latina y el Caribe
ECLAC, 2010
La crisis económica y financiera. Su impacto sobre la pobreza, el trabajo y el tiempo de las mujeres La crisis económica y financiera. Su impacto sobre la pobreza, el trabajo y el tiempo de las mujeres
ECLAC, 2010
Los Objetivos de Desarrollo del Milenio en Bogotá D.C.: propuestas de indicadores con enfoque de género Los Objetivos de Desarrollo del Milenio en Bogotá D.C.: propuestas de indicadores con enfoque de género

On the bases of: United Nations (2010). Achieving the Millennium Development Goals with equality in Latin America and the Caribbean. Progress and challenges.